Oh, the perils of having the same name as someone in trouble.
Florida attorney Cory Meltzer and chiropractor Roger Bell landed in hot water when authorities investigated a possible insurance fraud scheme between lawyers and chiropractors. The story was juicy enough to provide the subject of an American Takedown documentary on A&E, the “Arts and Entertainment” network that was founded to show 3 hour ballet specials before running 24/7 World War II retrospectives before settling on unironic 50+ hour marathons of The First 48.
In any event, the documentarians at American Takedown, exhibiting the sort of attention to detail one would expect from a network that shows the spellbinding work of Dog the Bounty Hunter, included a shot of Meltzer & Bell’s office sign. Except, of course, Meltzer and Bell didn’t work together. The whole point of the investigation was to draw improper connections between the ostensibly independent attorney, Meltzer, and chiropractor, Bell.
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The sign in question belonged instead to totally unrelated attorneys Larry Meltzer and Stephen Bell of Meltzer & Bell, P.A., who are unsurprisingly mad as hell over their firm getting dragged into a fraud probe they had nothing to do with.
As the ABA Journal writes:
The complaint alleges that A&E, in reckless disregard of the truth, stated to viewers and showed them photos of the firm that “made it appear to the millions of viewers who were watching the show, that the business sign and the physical location of the law firm, (Meltzer & Bell), was the same business location where the [claimed] insurance fraud was being committed.”
Plus, the show also stated that “the law firm was being staked out by the network and police, and that the law firm was committing … crimes,” the suit says.
“Looking at this, how can they not have realized that [Cory] Melzter and [Roger] Bell did not have a law firm together?” attorney Jamie Sasson, who is representing the plaintiffs, told the New Times. “Everyone knows lawyers and chiropractors don’t work together.”
Well, people may not realize that actually — skyrocketing costs of office space make for strange officefellows — but in this case, it’s hard to believe anyone devoting any time at all to covering this case would think the two worked under the same roof.
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Apparently, A&E’s core defense is that they never mention “Larry” Meltzer or “Stephen” Bell in the show. I’m sure that’ll work out great for them.
Law firm sues for libel after their sign was shown on TV show about unrelated insurance fraud probe [ABA Journal]